mick laBriola

Star formation can be messy. To help find out just how messy, ESA‘s new Sun-orbiting Euclid telescope recently captured the most detailed image ever of the bright star forming region M78. Near the image center, M78 lies at a distance of only about 1,300 light-years away and has a main glowing core that spans about 5 light-years. The featured image was taken in both visible and infrared light. The purple tint in M78’s center is caused by dark dustpreferentially reflecting the blue light of hot, young stars. Complex dust lanes and filaments can be traced through this gorgeous and revealing skyscape. On the upper left is associated star forming region NGC 2071, while a third region of star formation is visible on the lower right. These nebulas are all part of the vast Orion Molecular Cloud Complex which can be found with even a small telescope just north of Orion’s belt.

Bob Dylan (legally Robert Dylan; born Robert Allen Zimmerman, May 24, 1941) is an American singer-songwriter. Often considered to be one of the greatest songwriters in history, Dylan has been a major figure in popular culture over his 60-year career. He rose to prominence in the 1960s, when his songs “Blowin’ in the Wind” (1963) and “The Times They Are a-Changin’” (1964) became anthems for the civil rights and antiwar movements. Initially modeling his style on Woody Guthrie‘s folk songs, Robert Johnson‘s blues, and what he called the “architectural forms” of Hank Williams‘s country songs, Dylan added increasingly sophisticated lyrical techniques to the folk music of the early 1960s, infusing it “with the intellectualism of classic literature and poetry”. His lyrics incorporated political, social, and philosophical influences, defying pop music conventions and appealing to the decade’s burgeoning counterculture.

Dylan was born and raised in St. Louis County, Minnesota. Following his self-titled debut album of traditional folk songs in 1962, he made his breakthrough with The Freewheelin’ Bob Dylan the next year. The album featured “Blowin’ in the Wind” and “A Hard Rain’s a-Gonna Fall” which, like many of his early songs, adapted the tunes and phrasing of older folk songs. He released the politically charged The Times They Are a-Changin’ and the more lyrically abstract and introspective Another Side of Bob Dylan in 1964. In 1965 and 1966, Dylan drew controversy among folk purists when he adopted electrically amplified rock instrumentation, and in the space of 15 months recorded three of the most influential rock albums of the 1960s: Bringing It All Back Home, Highway 61 Revisited (both 1965) and Blonde on Blonde (1966). When Dylan made his move from acoustic folk and blues music to rock, the mix became more complex. His six-minute single “Like a Rolling Stone” (1965) expanded commercial and creative boundaries in popular music.

In July 1966, a motorcycle accident led to Dylan’s withdrawal from touring. During this period, he recorded a large body of songs with members of the Band, who had previously backed him on tour. These recordings were later released as The Basement Tapes in 1975. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, Dylan explored country music and rural themes on John Wesley Harding (1967), Nashville Skyline (1969) and New Morning (1970). In 1975, he released Blood on the Tracks, which many saw as a return to form. In the late 1970s, he became a born-again Christian and released three albums of contemporary gospel musicbefore returning to his more familiar rock-based idiom in the early 1980s. Dylan’s Time Out of Mind (1997) marked the beginning of a career renaissance. He has released five critically acclaimed albums of original material since, most recently Rough and Rowdy Ways (2020). He also recorded a trilogy of albums covering the Great American Songbook, especially songs sung by Frank Sinatra, and an album smoothing his early rock material into a mellower Americana sensibility, Shadow Kingdom (2023). Dylan has toured continuously since the late 1980s on what has become known as the Never Ending Tour.

Since 1994, Dylan has published nine books of paintings and drawings, and his work has been exhibited in major art galleries. He has sold more than 145 million records,^[14] making him one of the best-selling musicians ever. He has received numerous awards, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom, ten Grammy Awards, a Golden Globe Award and an Academy Award. Dylan has been inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Nashville Songwriters Hall of Fame and the Songwriters Hall of Fame. In 2008, the Pulitzer Prize Board awarded him a special citation for “his profound impact on popular music and American culture, marked by lyrical compositions of extraordinary poetic power.” In 2016, Dylan was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature “for having created new poetic expressions within the great American song tradition.

It lies some 70 million light-years away, south of bright star Regulus toward the faint constellation Sextans. Wound up spiral arms are pulled out into sweeping tidal tails as NGC 3169 (left) and neighboring NGC 3166 interact gravitationally. Eventually the galaxies will merge into one, a common fate even for bright galaxies in the local universe. Drawn out stellar arcs and plumes are clear indications of the ongoing gravitational interactions across the deep and colorful galaxy group photo. The telescopic frame spans about 20 arc minutes or about 400,000 light-years at the group’s estimated distance, and includes smaller, bluish NGC 3165 to the right. NGC 3169 is also known to shine across the spectrum from radio to X-rays, harboring an active galactic nucleus that is the site of a supermassive black hole.

The Whirlpool Galaxy, also known as Messier 51a (M51a) or NGC 5194, is an interacting grand-design spiral galaxy with a Seyfert 2 active galactic nucleus. It lies in the constellation Canes Venatici, and was the first galaxy to be classified as a spiral galaxy. It is 7.22 megaparsecs (23.5 million light-years) away and 23.58 kiloparsecs (76,900 ly) in diameter.

The galaxy and its companion, NGC 5195, are easily observed by amateur astronomers, and the two galaxies may be seen with binoculars. The Whirlpool Galaxy has been extensively observed by professional astronomers, who study it and its pair with NGC 5195 to understand galaxy structure (particularly structure associated with the spiral arms) and galaxy interactions. Its pair with NGC 5195is among the most famous and relatively close interacting systems, and thus is a favorite subject of galaxy interaction models.

Wilhelm Richard Wagner (/ˈvɑːɡnər/ VAHG-nər; German: [ˈʁɪçaʁt ˈvaːɡnɐ] 22 May 1813 – 13 February 1883) was a German composer, theatre director, polemicist, and conductor who is chiefly known for his operas (or, as some of his mature works were later known, “music dramas”). Unlike most opera composers, Wagner wrote both the libretto and the music for each of his stage works. Initially establishing his reputation as a composer of works in the romantic vein of Carl Maria von Weber and Giacomo Meyerbeer, Wagner revolutionised opera through his concept of the Gesamtkunstwerk (“total work of art”), by which he sought to synthesise the poetic, visual, musical and dramatic arts, with music subsidiary to drama. He described this vision in a series of essays published between 1849 and 1852. Wagner realised these ideas most fully in the first half of the four-opera cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen (The Ring of the Nibelung).

His compositions, particularly those of his later period, are notable for their complex textures, rich harmonies and orchestration, and the elaborate use of leitmotifs—musical phrases associated with individual characters, places, ideas, or plot elements. His advances in musical language, such as extreme chromaticism and quickly shifting tonal centres, greatly influenced the development of classical music. His Tristan und Isolde is sometimes described as marking the start of modern music.

Wagner had his own opera house built, the Bayreuth Festspielhaus, which embodied many novel design features. The Ring and Parsifal were premiered here and his most important stage works continue to be performed at the annual Bayreuth Festival, which was galvanized by the efforts of his wife Cosima Wagnerand the family’s descendants. His thoughts on the relative contributions of music and drama in opera were to change again, and he reintroduced some traditional forms into his last few stage works, including Die Meistersinger von Nürnberg (The Mastersingers of Nuremberg).

Until his final years, Wagner’s life was characterised by political exile, turbulent love affairs, poverty and repeated flight from his creditors. His controversial writings on music, drama and politics have attracted extensive comment – particularly since the late 20th century, as they express antisemitic sentiments. The effect of his ideas can be traced in many of the arts throughout the 20th century; his influence spread beyond composition into conducting, philosophy, literature, the visual arts and theatre.

Ian Robertson Underwood (born May 22, 1939) is a woodwind and keyboards player, known as a member of the original version of Frank Zappa‘s band the Mothers of Invention. Following the original band’s split in late 1969, Underwood continued to work with Zappa extensively during the 1970s.

Underwood graduated from The Choate School in 1957 and Yale University with a bachelor’s degree in composition in 1961 and a master’s degree in composition at UC Berkeley in 1966. He began his career by playing San Francisco Bay Area coffeehouses and bars with his improvisational group, the Jazz Mice, in the mid-1960s before he became a member of Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention in 1967 for their third studio album, We’re Only in It for the Money. He speaks on Uncle Meat; on the track “Ian Underwood Whips It Out” he relates how he first met Zappa and demonstrated his capabilities on the saxophone at Zappa’s invitation. Underwood later worked with Frank Zappa on his solo recordings, including 1969’s Hot Rats. He married Ruth Komanoff(Underwood), marimbist/percussionist from the Mothers of Invention in May 1969. Underwood left the Mothers of Invention in September 1973. He and Ruth divorced in 1986.

After his association with Frank Zappa, he pursued a career as a session keyboardist. Underwood has since been proficient on the Minimoog synthesizer, mostly in film. He has been credited in recordings for Quincy Jones, Barbra Streisand, Ronee Blakley, Hugh Cornwell, Freddie Hubbard, Jean-Luc Ponty, Herb Alpert, Hugh Masekela, Peggy Lee, Dolly Parton, Chicago, Janet Jackson, Dave Grusin, Jefferson Airplane, Frankie Valli, the Carpenters, James Ingram, and Barry Manilow. Underwood was also one of the musicians who played the main title theme for the 1980s hit series Knight Rider. Underwood was the uncredited producer of the debut album by Alice Cooper, Pretties For You, in 1969.

Barron W. “Barry” Rogers (May 22, 1935 – April 18, 1991) was an American jazz and salsa trombonist.

Born in The Bronx, he descended from Polish Jews and was raised in Spanish Harlem. His family (original name: Rogenstein) possessed a strong musicality. His father and several of his uncles sang in the choir of Joseph Rosenblatt, and his mother taught in Africa and Mexico, inspiring an interest in music from other nations. Mambo and jazz popular in his neighbourhood.

As a student of the playing of jazz trombonists Jack Teagarden, Lawrence Brown, and J. C. Higginbotham, Rogers began to play Latin music in the mid-1950s and would be most associated with it from then on. He developed his style while working with Eddie Palmieri. Willie Colón regarded Rogers as his strongest musical influence and would feature him in many of his productions. Bobby Valentín would feature Rogers in his song “El Jíbaro y la Naturaleza”, which led Marvin Santiago to nickname him “El Terror de los Trombones” for the record.

Rogers worked with Israel “Cachao” López, Machito, Manny Oquendo, Celia Cruz, Tito Puente, Cheo Feliciano, Johnny Pacheco, Chino Rodríguez, and the Fania All-Stars. Although known as a salsa trombonist and studio musician, he worked with jazz, soul, and pop musicians. He was a founding member of the band Dreams with Michael Brecker, Randy Brecker, and Billy Cobham. He also worked with George Benson, David Byrne, Ron Carter, Aretha Franklin, Don Grolnick, Bob James, Elton John, Chaka Khan, Bob Moses, Todd Rundgren, Carly Simon, Spyro Gyra, James Taylor, and Grover Washington Jr. The father of trumpeter Chris Rogers, Barry Rogers died suddenly in Washington Heights, Manhattan at the age of 55.

Le Sony’r Ra (born Herman Poole Blount, May 22, 1914 – May 30, 1993 Birmingham, AL), better known as Sun Ra, was an American jazz composer, bandleader, piano and synthesizer player, and poet known for his experimental music, “cosmic” philosophy, prolific output, and theatrical performances. For much of his career, Ra led The Arkestra, an ensemble with an ever-changing name and flexible line-up.

Born and raised in Alabama, Blount became involved in the Chicago jazz scene during the late 1940s. He soon abandoned his birth name, taking the name Le Sony’r Ra, shortened to Sun Ra (after Ra, the Egyptian god of the Sun). Claiming to be an alien from Saturn on a mission to preach peace, he developed a mythical persona and an idiosyncratic credo that made him a pioneer of Afrofuturism. Throughout his life he denied ties to his prior identity saying, “Any name that I use other than Ra is a pseudonym.” His widely eclectic and avant-garde music echoed the entire history of jazz, from ragtime and early New Orleans hot jazz, to swing music, bebop, free jazz and fusion. His compositions ranged from keyboard solos to works for big bands of over 30 musicians, along with electronic excursions, songs, chants, percussion pieces, and anthems.

From the mid-1950s until his death, Ra led the musical collective The Arkestra, which featured artists such as Marshall Allen, John Gilmore and June Tyson throughout its various iterations. Its performances often included dancers and musicians dressed in elaborate, futuristic costumes inspired by ancient Egyptianattire and the Space Age. Following Ra’s retirement in 1992 due to illness, the band remained active as The Sun Ra Arkestra, and, as of 2023, continues performing under the leadership of veteran Ra sideman Marshall Allen.

Though his mainstream success was limited, Ra was a prolific recording artist and frequent live performer, and remained influential throughout his life for his music and persona. He is now widely considered an innovator; among his distinctions are his pioneering work in free improvisation and modal jazz and his early use of electronic keyboards and synthesizers. Over his career, he recorded dozens of singles and over 100 full-length albums, comprising well over 1,000 songs, making him one of the most prolific recording artists of the 20th century.